Zimmer Group: Data security and integrity as a competitive advantage
Date: 18.05.2026
Security risks in established structures
The Zimmer Group, known as „The Know-How Factory“, operates in 15 technology areas with over 13,000 standard components. Despite a high degree of automation, there was a critical bottleneck in the IT/OT link: enormous amounts of quality data were stored unencrypted on file servers. This process no longer met modern requirements for data integrity and protection against manipulation. In addition, undocumented in-house developments made the maintenance and scalability of the overall system more difficult.
The implementation of a standardized communication solution
The strategy was to replace all proprietary stand-alone solutions with a standardized industrial communication platform. This middleware now records thousands of measured values per second from Beckhoff and Siemens controllers and transfers them in encrypted form directly to the MS SQL databases. There they are „married“ with the batch information from the ERP system.
Results for the digital transformation
With this step, the Zimmer Group has reached a new level of digital maturity:
* Increased data security: Encrypted transmission via an OPC interface has drastically minimized the security risk in the traceability of quality checks.
* Lean and efficient structures: multiple file servers and complex XML queries have been replaced by direct, automated data transfer.
* Strategic basis for OEE: The clean database now serves as the foundation for calculating overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) in order to determine the productivity of each individual machine worldwide.
